An iPhone or an Android smartphone collects several megabytes of your personal data every day to Google Servers, even when it is inactive.
Murena smartphones have been designed to offer a different approach to users who care about privacy and data-hungry handsets.
Those smartphones are running the open-source “/e/OS” operating system, which is fully “deGoogled”: by default it doesn’t send any data to Google and it’s been designed to offer a great and natural user experience.
/e/OS is paired with carefully selected applications. They form a privacy-enabled internal system for your Murena smartphone. And it’s not just claims: open-source means auditable privacy.
How do you install an alternate os if the phone isn't rootable? Everything I've tried starts with rooting, and there's not a way to root my particular phone.
I'm probably just overly paranoid, but I don't trust that Google, in particular, would make the most easily rooted phone (Pixel) without burying something beneath the os that still tracks things.
I'm more excited about something akin to the Fairphone that's built from the ground up with no relationship to Google.
As someone that happens to using e/os on a phone with an unofficial device. You are technically correct. They offer custom Roms for a variety of devices that you can install however they also have their own range of devices which admittedly is lack luster in terms of price to performance. From what I gather those devices try to follow in the footsteps of the Fairphone but with all the growing pains of a startup... I like the os. they offer cloud services as an addon that you can pay for which is based on nextcloud. The integration with the cloud services in surprisingly deep. Coming back to the fact that its based on nextcloud you also have the option to self host (which I recommend) and still benefit from the tight integration and that aspect alone is a major reason why I'm still using it. Gallery, notes,backups,cloud storage. All the Google like service's built in but without the Google
The biggest problem I've had with e/OS is the lack of apps. Banking apps, official apps, etc. All require Google Play most of the time. As an Android developer, I know how to make this work, but the average user won't.
I haven't tried in two years. Maybe things have changed.
I think you're confusing rooting with unlocking the bootloader. These most definitely have the bootloader unlocked, or at least, it had to be unlocked to replace the OS (sometimes it can be re-locked after), but they aren't necessarily rooted.
Bootloader unlocking is officially supported by many manufacturers (though your warranty is voided), and allows modifying the OS, which might be rooting, or completely replacing the OS (and the new OS might not be rooted).
Rooting, instead, just means becoming "root" (superuser, admin) on the device, which allows (almost) complete control over it.
I've been using e os every since the fairphone 4 hit the market (and I got it quite fast). I think it's absolutely great.
A caveat which is funny to me and I like:
Since the playstore service is missing, and micro G sinks every server request to Google, in app purchases via those systems are simply not a thing. Personally I love this si ce I have never needed or want to buy anything from any app; but it's incredible to me that any ad that even tried to load, can't
I can't find the sources (still looking) but there one that /e/OS have trackers on their emails every time they sent one and most of the apps on their store are outdated